OpenCoffee Manchester is innovating

Since handing over the organising of OpenCoffee Manchester to Paul Robinson and given the success of collaboration during the past events (e.g. founding of edocr), Paul has decided to combine OpenCoffee with Co-Working, an original initiative by Paul. The next event will take place on 22nd January 2008 at MDDA in Manchester. The details of the event can be found here. I have not finalised my plans for 22nd, but hope that I could attend at least the OpenCoffee session.

Whilst I believe this creates a new type of event, my suspicion is that this might end up becoming a development event in the medium term unless the right balance is reached between business and software development. The OpenCoffee component of the day could also be overrun by the Co-Working concept, reducing OpenCoffee to a coffee break. In my opinion, one way to avoid this happening is to preserve the original venue of OpenCoffee, so that Co-Working participants would have to physically move to another venue where businesses could easily interact.

One of the reasons I handed over OpenCoffee to Paul is that I could not unite business and developer community. Paul has vital connectivity and trusted by both communities which meant he is in a better situation to unite the two communities and increase attendance. I hope my reservations will be proven wrong with respect to OpenCoffee becoming a coffee break. I would like to see the original concept of Saul Klein preserved but at the same time more collaboration taking place with real interaction between the two communities.

I hear you say, come on Manoj, give Paul a break! The event has not even taken place. Bit too early to judge! With that thought, let’s make it a successful event overcoming any potential negativity.

Well it was my first Open Coffee and since I was there as part of the co-working day I was able to justify being there as so was the other person I work with. I’ve not been able to make past ones as they occur in a part of Manchester where I don’t work and take up a sizeable chunk of the morning – early evening would be better generally for this sort of thing. It’s a shame the Networking4Business doesn’t do his evening doos anymore in Manchester. Anyways I digres, if the point was to connect with the techie community then this evolution of Open Coffee achieved it.
Unfortunately (and whilst there is a lot of crossover from the techie community) nearly everyone apart from one was not from the general business community. I was actually enjoying the prospect of talking about the economics of startups etc. I would have thought a more secluded space than an open to anyone space would have been easier to talk business in ? However Ed French did make it over, and I enjoyed a brief chat. Shame a few more didn’t make it.
Later in the day we also made some good progress in organising potential co-working office space. A good day overall with some interesting people. Concepts evolve and merge all the time, just like technology, so I think Paul deserves credit and thanks for giving it a go.

Well it was my first Open Coffee and since I was there as part of the co-working day I was able to justify being there as so was the other person I work with. I’ve not been able to make past ones as they occur in a part of Manchester where I don’t work and take up a sizeable chunk of the morning – early evening would be better generally for this sort of thing. It’s a shame the Networking4Business doesn’t do his evening doos anymore in Manchester. Anyways I digres, if the point was to connect with the techie community then this evolution of Open Coffee achieved it.
Unfortunately (and whilst there is a lot of crossover from the techie community) nearly everyone apart from one was not from the general business community. I was actually enjoying the prospect of talking about the economics of startups etc. I would have thought a more secluded space than an open to anyone space would have been easier to talk business in ? However Ed French did make it over, and I enjoyed a brief chat. Shame a few more didn’t make it.
Later in the day we also made some good progress in organising potential co-working office space. A good day overall with some interesting people. Concepts evolve and merge all the time, just like technology, so I think Paul deserves credit and thanks for giving it a go.